White hat

From SEO Wiki

What's in a Hat ?

There are many different strategies for the applyication of Search Engine Optimisation. One way that different techniques have been classified is through the concept of Black Hats and White Hats.

Both tpes of techniques (when applied correctly) can be very effective in improving a sites ranking, however there are important differences :

Black Hat Techniques, are sometimes considered to be risky as they tend to focus on Search Engines rather than users, and aim to convince the Seach Engines that the site is worth looking at

whereas White Hat techniques are essentially oriented towards improving a sites "User Experience", by providing the type of information that a user is looking for - and making it easier to navigate and find the relevant information on a site.

"White hat" SEO methods

There are a range of ways a website can be coded, or the server they reside on set up, that do not allow search engines access to either the pages on the site or the content they contain. White hat SEOs attempt to discover and correct these mistakes, such as JavaScript content delivery and navigation, URL sessions and content hidden in flash, as well as increase and improve the content on the site.

An SEO tactic, technique or method is considered "White hat" if it conforms to the search engines' guidelines and/or involves no deception. As the search engine guidelines<ref name="a-wmguide">Ask.com Editorial Guidelines</ref><ref> Google's Guidelines on SEOs </ref><ref name="g-wmguide">Google's Guidelines on Site Design </ref><ref name="ms-wmguide">MSN Search Guidelines for successful indexing </ref><ref name="y-wmguide">Yahoo! Search Content Quality Guidelines</ref> are not written as a series of rules or commandments, this is an important distinction to note. White Hat SEO is not just about following guidelines, but is about ensuring that the content a search engine indexes and subsequently ranks is the same content a user will see.

White Hat advice is generally summed up as creating content for users, not for search engines, and then make that content easily accessible to their spiders, rather than game the system. In many ways, white hat SEO is very similar to web development that promotes accessibility<ref>Andy Hagans, A List Apart, High Accessibility Is Effective Search Engine Optimization</ref>, although the two are not identical.

Some SEO methods generally accepted by search engines: <ref name="hrtop10"> Whalen, Jill, HighRankings Forum, Ten Tips to the Top of the Search Engines</ref>

• Using unique and relevant titles (<title></title>) for each page.
• Editing web page content to replace vague wording with specific terminology relevant to the subject of the page.
• Providing unique, quality content to address visitor interests.
• Using an accurate description meta tag to make search listings more informative.
• Ensuring that all pages are accessible via anchor tag hyperlinks.
• Allowing search engine spiders to crawl pages without session IDs, cookies, or logging in.
• Developing "link bait" strategies. High quality websites that offer interesting content or novel features tend to accumulate large numbers of back links.
• Writing useful, informational articles in exchange for attribution to the author by hyperlink.